Lesson 3: The Contextual Horizon (1)
Assignment
Highlighting
Search for and highlight answers to the “Six Questions to Discover the Setting” in the text below. Be sure to highlight everything that answers one of the six questions.
Highlight each word or phrase that answers one of the six questions by first selecting the text. (Click and drag to select text.) Then, add the appropriate color from the “Basic Highlighting” box, according to what question is being answered:
a. Who? - yellow
b. When? - blue
c. Where? - red
d. Why? - green
e. How? - orange
f. What? - grey
Finding Quotations
Under each of the six questions below, record an answer from one of the commentaries in your Five Horizons bibliography, making sure to include the author, book, and page number (or just the section the quotation is from if you are accessing Stead’s commentary through Biblearc Books). See the following example, answering the question “Who?”: “Darius I ruled the Persian Empire from 522 to 486 BC” (Stead, “Haggai,” in ESV Expository Commentary, Volume 7: Daniel—Malachi, under Haggai 1:1-15, "Comment," 1:1). Here is a summary of what each question is asking, to help you find the right answers:
Six Questions to Discover the Setting
Who? The authorship, audience, and major figures and powers of the passage.
When? The original date of the message in relation to major periods and powers, including assessment of what events precede and follow….
Where? The physical location and geography pointed to in the text.
Why? The cause and purpose of the message.
How? The genre and thought flow of the passage. At stake here is answering, “Why did he say it that way?”
What? Here our focus is less on what is said and more on what is assumed in the text (e.g. worldview, social structures, customs, politics, religious practices, and geographic considerations).